[maxerickson]

This would be more true if hospitals weren't allowed to bill patients for services that insurance refuses to cover.

But hospitals force patients to agree to be responsible for all bills their insurance doesn't cover.

So there are two large institutions, neither of which is entirely aligned with the interests of the individual dealing with them. Of course hospitals aren't trying to kill people, but good luck figuring out if the care they bill for is really necessary or not.

[bedhead]

All correct...again, no price transparency, and every single party in the chain (other than the consumer) benefits from higher prices.

[sevensor]

This has been a huge issue for me lately. Several times in the last year my family has been in the position of trying to decide whether to have a procedure done, and literally nobody can tell us how much it costs. Not the providers, not the insurance companies, not the hospital. "Probably less than $50k" is not a helpful answer. The best answers we were able to find came from other people who had already had similar procedures done at the same hospital, by the same providers. But even so, one quirk in the procedure, one extra diagnostic, one extra drug, can cost thousands of dollars. Once you've signed up for the procedure, it's very hard to say no to the extras. You might not even know they've been ordered until it's too late.

[rayiner]

That phenomenon isn't unique to medical procedures. The answer to the question "how much is this lawsuit/software project/renovation going to cost?" is almost never going to be a definite number. (It's no surprise that people complain about bills in all these areas. But it's not your contractor's fault that your subfloor rotted and his $X quote for re-tiling now needs to include $Y for replacing the subfloor.)

[sevensor]

But the contractor will at least give you an estimate and say, "this job will cost $2200 unless your subfloor is rotted out." And they can at least give you a verbal estimate of how much more it would cost if the subfloor is rotten. In the last year, I've dealt with this exact situation --- linoleum replacement with rotted subfloor. I'll take contractors over the medical industry any day for pricing transparency.